Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Birmingham election results

As I predicted earlier, Birmingham City Council President Carole Smitherman(D) hung on to win re-election last night. She defeated local community activist Sheilia Tyson by just 98 votes. So unless something shocking happens at the upcoming trial of Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford. Mrs Smitherman will take over once Mayor Langford is convicted which will probably be around the middle of next month. Its worth noting to those of you outside of Alabama that this race got real vicious the last few weeks. Ms. Tyson found a dead cat at her front door one morning and a private investigator was looking into her background at a college she attended in Virginia. In other city council races, two term incumbent Carol Duncan lost to newcomer Kim Rafferty. Ms. Rafferty has had a very bad week her husband had a heart attack over the weekend and her son has swine flu. So this was very good news for the Rafferty household. Back in August during the general election for the City Council long time incumbent Joel Montgomery was easily defeated. Mr Montgomery had some pretty bad personal problems in recent years so it wasnt a surprise that he went down. One final note on the city council races in Birmingham concerns the legendary former Birmingham Mayor Richard Arrington. He has been dropping strong hints that he will run in a special election next year for the Mayor's seat if/when Larry Langford gets convicted here in a few weeks. He even went as far as endorsing certain candidates for the city council. How did those candidates do yesterday you ask. Well everyone of them lost. So it seems Mr Arrington doesnt have the power that he once had back in the 80's and 90's.